Learning about New York Jewish Intellectuals

The group of New York Jewish intellectuals, grouped around Commentary and Partisan Review mostly, do represent not only an important episode in the intellectual history of Jewish thought in the aftermath of the WWII in America, but also do follow patterns and mindset reflected by the overall flow of thought in the American society itself. 

The insightful online course held by Prof. Ruth Wisse from Tikvah Fund is revealing in more than one aspect. In addition to discussing the changes underwent by the Jewish representation among this group of intellectuals it also offers important details, often acquired first hand, about the evolution of mentalities in the US. Last but not least, it outlines profiles of significant yet forgotten intellectuals, such as Delmore Schwartz or Robert Warshow, besides featuring famous names like Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, Milton Himmelfarb or Irving Kristol and Saul Bellow. 

This course is a very important source of inspiration and understanding about the New York intellectual realm in the context of the Cold War, with communists/liberals versus conservatives taking the first stage. Only that the debates weren´t purely of intellectual nature, with FBI watching over the Moscow connections, that sometimes were more than purely of intellectual nature. Interesting times, one may say, but nevertheless also part of the Jewish post-WWII narrative.

What it definitely interested me the most and hopefully will be able to follow further in detail through essays and memoirs by some of the members of the movement, is the ways in which those intellectuals connected to tradition. Some needed to reinvent it, as the second or third generation of immigrants, coming from families that did their best to turn into ´Americans´, some needed only to connect the missing link in the story. Topics like intermarriage and Jewish demography in the diaspora as well as the position towards Israel continue to be of high interest among the US Jewry and following this path those ideas took, including by being completely reshaped, may offer interesting details about Jewish-American realm of ideas nowadays.

A recommended class to anyone keen to expand his or her knowledge about New York Jewish intellectuals and Jewish stories in general.